Art and Design Commons^™

Spirits Of The King, Ali Al-Ani

College of Computing and Digital Media Dissertations

Spirits of the King (SotK) is a 1v1 card game where players use essential resources to conjure spirits from a shared pool to defeat their opponent. Players must make strategic sacrifices to keep themselves from danger or to threaten their opponent, ultimately revealing how much they are willing to risk for victory. The themes, mechanics, and material design of SotK are very heavily inspired by information found in Aleister Crowley’s The Lesser Key of Solomon.

Experiential Humanitiesx

DePaul Magazine

DePaul University's HumanitiesX program promotes project-based learning through innovative community collaborations.

Tech Time

DePaul Magazine

DePaul is embracing tech more than ever, incorporating innovative devices and approaches into education in all corners of the university. Here are seven ways DePaul provides hands-on experiences with cutting-edge tools that position students and faculty in the forefront of their industries and disciplines.

Well Played

DePaul Magazine

At DePaul's high-tech Esports Gaming Center, students gather to compete in competitive video gaming. As players battle on screen, they depend on skills like teamwork, strategy and sportsmanship as well as inclusion.

Donor Profile: Artful Thinking

DePaul Magazine

The original Andy Warhol artwork sat tucked away in a box in the back of Judy Blumberg's (BUS MS '80, MST '84) closet. Her late husband Avrom Blumberg, a longtime chemistry professor at DePaul, had a deep love of teaching. When his family began thinking about what to do with the Warhol artwork, they knew they wanted it to connect with others. So they turned to the DePaul Art Museum.

An “Other” Experience Of Videogames: Analyzing The Connections Between Videogames And The Lived Experience Of Chronic Pain, Gracie Straznickas

College of Computing and Digital Media Dissertations

In this dissertation I argue for the connections between the lived experience of chronic pain and videogames, exploring what interacts with and influences them. To answer this, I draw on cripistemology as I engage in autoethnography, close-reading and close-gameplay, restorying, mixed methods design, formal interviews, surveys, and inductive coding. I further argue for pushing back against the unhelpful binaries that define the “human” and a false idea of “universal” experience or ability, instead pointing to the intersectionality that better reflects the biopolitics of disability, including both debility and capacity. I engage with these methods in three specific projects that consider …

Professional Partners

DePaul Magazine

DePaul students draw on specialized skills to serve business and industrial clients.

Game On

DePaul Magazine

Video game industry icon Eugene Jarvis and DePaul alumna and Trustee Sasha Gerritson take the College of Computing and Digital Media to the next level with a landmark gift. The gift renames the college in honor of Jarvis and launches the Jarvis Student Center for Innovation and Collaboration, a multidisciplinary, student-focused space.

Depaul Digest

DePaul Magazine

Marquee - A Level Playing Field: Allen Turner democratizes Indigenous mythology in games that empower everybody; Memoranda - Vincentian Service Day, The Finish Line Fund and Alumni & Family Weekend 2022 registration; Milestones; Memories - DePaul Breakfast Feeding Program; Master Class - How to Make Kids Safer Swimmers

Raid Elite, Wenda Li

College of Computing and Digital Media Dissertations

This game inspiration are the real-time strategy game and raid in MMORPG. In this game, you need to get familiar with and operate five different characters. There are two bosses you can choose to fight. This game use Unity 2020.3.18f2c2 as game engine. All art is hand drawn. The design goal is making a game with certain depth which requires some effort to win. The design challenge for myself is design some interesting boss fights and accomplish a complete game which has good visual feedback.

The Machine Upstairs, Jacob Friedfeld

College of Computing and Digital Media Dissertations

Immersive simulation design, broadly speaking, is a game design philosophy centered around player expression, emergent gameplay, and dynamic narrative. Contrary to what the phrase may imply simply by reading it, immersion in and of itself is not necessarily enough for a game to be classified as an “immersive sim” (or IMSIM for short). Many different types of games can utilize immersion to great effect, but immersive simulations require a level of flexibility and rule/system-based approaches beyond the scope of games that occupy similar genres.

The Machine Upstairs represents an exploration of the immersive simulation philosophy and an investigation into its …

A Gift Of Relationship

DePaul Magazine

The Weitz Family Foundation of Omaha recently elevated the Visual Art Education program at DePaul’s College of Education with a gift that establishes a new endowed chair and supports the program’s pioneering Stockyard Institute. Katie Weitz, the foundation’s executive director, shares how her own education, and her family’s charitable efforts, have been impacted by the Stockyard Institute’s community-engagement initiatives.

Lucid, Gabriela Garcia

College of Computing and Digital Media Dissertations

The PC video game, Lucid, promotes self-reflection and emotional exploration by balancing interactive dream journals with a meditative platform puzzle. Players switch between reflecting on their dreams through dream journals and following the main character’s story as they realize they are in a dream. To finish the platforming portion, the player travels up and around the mountain by completing short puzzles. This is done to deliver the last living flower from the garden to the castle at the top of the mountain.

By building personal dream journals into the game, Lucid highlights how games can be used as tools for …

Winter 2021

In The Loop

2021 Emmy Nominees; Animator Tapped by Cartoon Network; IndieCade Horizons 2021; Hack4Space; Security Daemons Prevail; Role Models: DePaul Originals Game Studio students build industry-level skills that benefit themselves and others; Frames and Fortune: Eugene Bush programmed his indie video studio with patience and planning; Reality Check: Heather Snyder Quinn augments reality to question systems of unchecked power

Meowster Thesis, Xiaojing (Monica) Fan

College of Computing and Digital Media Dissertations

Meowster Thesis is a game about cats, loneliness and what it means to be alive. It is also what keeps me alive thru isolation during Covid-19 pandemic.

Playfair Axiom, Alexander Bakos

College of Computing and Digital Media Dissertations

This game seeks to bridge nuanced gameplay with more expansive themes of existentialism, life, and death. I attempt to bridge these concepts together through the mechanics and visuals, both of which play an integral role to one another. Through consistently evolving imagery that increases in complexity from a gameplay perspective I seek to elicit a reflective and emotional response from the player. My attempts with the project are to allow players to draw their own conclusions on what the greater meaning of the game is as well as what each individual component in the game could represent. Oftentimes, the subtleties …

Spring 2021

In The Loop

IRL Programs Debut; Short & Sweet Pandemic Film Fest; New MS in Artificial Intelligence; Virtual Experts Talks; DePaul Trustee Producing Documentary; DemonHacks Hackathon; Silicon Valley 2.0: The DePaul Innovation Development Lab connects students and companies to spark solutions to technological challenges; Code Warrior: Ovetta Sampson has risen to challenges in digital design, journalism and athletics while inspiring others; Pattern Recognition: A CDM health informatics team joins a global race to advance COVID-19 diagnostics through X-ray insights

Seen And Heard

In The Loop

IRL Programs Debut; Short & Sweet Pandemic Film Fest; New MS in Artificial Intelligence; Virtual Experts Talks; DePaul Trustee Producing Documentary; DemonHacks Hackathon

For|Rest, Jes Klass

College of Computing and Digital Media Dissertations

In for/rest, players navigate a world built around an interpretation of the liminal space of grief. Glitching, blinking roots are all around an otherwise grey, empty space and as players destroy these roots they gradually resaturate the landscape. Each time a root is destroyed, the player will watch it disintegrate in front of them while some form of animal or plant spawns in the root’s stead. On rare occasions, instead of a plant or animal, a human will phase into the world as a root disintegrates. This human, Charlie, roams around the forest and offers the player a chance to …

Abandoned Spaces, Anthony Tate

College of Computing and Digital Media Dissertations

The goal of this project is to show how color can display an emotional connection to the environment. How colors can be portrayed to human emotions without telling the audience. As well as having the audience imagining what kind of economy that used to be in the environment. The objective is to create a game that will tell a story from the environment and how colors are used to help tell a story of the environment. This thesis project is a game that attempts to show how colors can be related to emotions.

Atlas Planted, Annelise Belmonte

College of Computing and Digital Media Dissertations

In "Atlas Planted," the game world plays as a life theater production where the storyline is influenced by player and other characters in a metaphorical and literal gardening mechanic. The emphasis on selfish vs selfless action in regards to energy and foliage serves as a critique of social responsibility and objectivism, the philosophy developed by Ayn Rand where each person is their own hero. According to that philosophy, if everyone were free to pursue their own greatest desires without directly harming others, the whole world would be better for it. In the case of these characters, how they pursue their …

Designing An Interactive Theatre Game With Dynamic Asynchronous Play, Ardian Amiti

College of Computing and Digital Media Dissertations

This project proposes the use of asynchronous narrative mechanics and dynamic elements of gameplay to further the player’s sense of interaction with characters and the environment of the game, inspired by interactive theatre performances such as Sleep No More. The player plants seeds in a garden which is maintained by several Non-Playable Characters, influencing both the environment and the narrative. Scenes occur according to the state of the garden, but do not wait for the player to be present. Plants grow and wilt as time passes. Sometimes the player cedes control as the characters tend to or cut down plants, …

News

In The Loop

News briefs: Hollywood Reporter Honor; Studio CDM Documents Remote Initiatives; Animation Jam Goes Virtual; "Tom of Your Life" Film Release; D.E.F. Showcase 2020; Trackmania Soundtrack; Alumnus Commemorates St. Vincent de Paul; Alumni Games at PixelPop; Cybersecurity Champion

Fall 2020

In The Loop

Studio CDM Documents Remote Initiatives; "Tom of Your Life" Film Release; Animation Jam Goes Virtual; DePaul Experimental Film Showcase 2020; Trackmania Soundtrack; Alumni Games at Pixel Pop; Alumnus Commemorates St. Vincent de Paul; Cybersecurity Champion Alina Kuzmenkova; Walking the Walk: Youth programs at CDM express DePaul’s Vincentian values; Fair Treatment: Three initiatives address racial inequity in health care; They've Got You Covered: A School of Design instructor leads a cottage industry of makers protecting essential workers from the novel coronavirus; Meet Would-Be Hot Topic Influencer Vera Drew; Data Detectives: CDM helps Chicago track the racial proportions of its COVID-19 cases

Students Find More Than Gaming In Depaul Esports, University Marketing And Communications, Courtney James

DePaul Download

The Esports market, or competitive video gaming, is anticipated to surpass $1.5 billion by 2023. At DePaul, Esports is even a BIG EAST-sanctioned program. DePaul’s director of Student Involvement, Courtney James, talks about DePaul’s unique Esports community, which draws hundreds of student gamers. Through their participation, the students find connection, an inclusive environment and even inspiration for career paths. James also discusses some of DePaul’s upcoming Esports events and the pandemic’s impact on the industry.

Spring 2020

In The Loop

Letter from the Dean: Advancing Past Adversity; Look Who's Talking: Expert Talk Series; Seen and Heard; Keeping It Real: Client Web Projects for Students; OMG, It's DIBS, LOL!; X-ray Vision: Brian Andrews bones up on anthropomorphic entities and virtual realty in an audacious Project Bluelight film; Nothing But Net: Shannon Linares scores a win for female and first-generation college students in network engineering and cybersecurity careers; Mix Master: Claire Rosas blends disciplines and social synergy in her designs, from egg-ceptional typography to adaptive ergs

Spring 2020

Insights

Dean's Column: Here We Continue to Do ... By Giving Back; Blueprint for LAS Alumni Engagement; Homecoming: Lance Pelletier comes back to the Honors Program as an honored guest; LAS Alumni: Out in the World; What Must Be Done?: A unique Honors Program seminar tackles the wicked problem of homelessness from many perspectives; Rooted in Peace: DePaul's Peace, Justice and Conflict Studies Program celebrates its 10th anniversary; Faculty Publications; In Brief; Making Headlines; The Art School at LAS; Human Rights Advocate and Entrepreneur Credits His Success to DePaul; Global Citizen: For Michaela Milligan, China is her home away from home

Fall 2019

In The Loop

Health Outlook: A unique medical informatics partnership opens students' eyes to research-intensive graduate programs and careers; The Voices of Summer: CDM and the Chicago Housing Authority team up to help Chicago youth express their creativity; Bright Idea: Data science professors take a shine to luminous technology for online learning; They've Got Game: A team of students and alumni score points with a tricked-out basketball toy and an anime hoops star; You Look Marvelous; A DePaul alumna sours at America's most superpowered dream factory; Seen and Heard; Code of Honor: Redar Ismail transforms adversity into award-winning software that aids others

Depaul Digest - Moments

DePaul Magazine

Bro. Mark Elder, C.M., and Art, Media, and Design students work on a mural honoring the Black Student Union for a pillar under the CTA’s Fullerton ‘L’ stop.

Thomas Kong Interview, Jon Lovisetto

Asian American Art Oral History Project

Artist bio: Thomas Kong is an artist working in collage and assemblage, using advertising, packaging and other surplus material from his convenience store, Kim's Corner Food, located in the Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago.

Kim's Corner Food features an evolving installation of Kong's work, and is open to customers and visitors 7 days a week from 8AM - 8PM at 1371 W. Estes Ave, Chicago, IL 60626.

The Back Room, an experimental project space in the store's former stock room, operated from October 2015 – March 2019, and has now closed. Bio from: https://thomaskong.biz/